


tumblr prompts and drabbles

by Archetype_ElectraHeart



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fairies, Alternate Universe - Roommates, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Florist Steve, Multi, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-06-08 19:11:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6869887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archetype_ElectraHeart/pseuds/Archetype_ElectraHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ch 1: Bucky gets taken by the UnSeelie Court AU (Darcy/Bucky/Steve)<br/>Ch 2: prompt for Darcy/Bucky/Steve/Sam/Nat as roommates<br/>Ch 3: Darcy/Steve, soulmate and florist AU<br/>Ch 4: Darcy/Steve, Steve gets turned into a dog<br/>Ch 5: Darcy wears rattlesnake venom infused nail polish, is a BAMF<br/>Ch 6: Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's niece</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (I'm on tumblr at pepperpottsplots (my primary blog) and pepperpottsblogs (for fandom related stuff))

okay but an AU wherein Bucky is not taken by Hydra, but by the Unseelie court. 

They build him a new arm out of twisting tree branches and vines, but they take out his (tragically fragile and human) heart and keep it in an iron casket in order to ensure his fealty. He becomes the favorite knight of the Unseelie Queen, because despite his obedience there is still an expression of horror and distaste at every act of violence he commits at her behest. His leather armor glistens black from the blood he is forced to rub in after every kill. He is known as the Black Knight.

Steve, brave noble _stupid_ Steve, goes to get him back. And the fae are just beside themselves because here is a human that will be delicious to break, with his noble, self-sacrificing heart and his fiery temperament. And he’s so pretty with his honey hair and sea glass eyes, like the most shining members of the Seelie Court, but his unvarnished beauty is a peculiarity in the grotesque Night Court. Regardless, in order to win Bucky back, Steve has to serve the Unseelie—an uneasy match at best, and he sticks out like a sore thumb at every court gathering. He is just so bright and sweet—an excellent balance for his love, dark and sharp-edged as he is. Forcing Steve to watch every violent act that Bucky is ordered to complete and powerless to resist becomes the court’s new favorite amusement. 

And Darcy is a changeling, her fey tendencies tempered by the humans who raised her, but she knows the Unseelie court and she _told_ Steve not to go, that he wouldn’t know the rules to their games. She warned him of the consequences of serving the faeries, of the untold masses who tried to get their loved ones back only to lose their hearts in the bargain. But Steve didn’t know that Darcy was fey herself, and told her that she worried too much, and that he’d be fine and went off half-cocked and self-righteous, down the barrow and straight into a gilt trap.

So Darcy goes down the barrow two weeks after Steve left the city, her glamour shed so that her wings glimmer in the firefly-light and her hair shines an iridescent black-green. She schools herself not to react to the petty acts of cruelty occurring all around her: the wings of lesser beings crushed into powder for sport, the thin trails of blood left behind by servants in thorned manacles and collars. She slowly wends her way through the crowd towards the throne—she has to pay her respects to the Unseelie Queen after her long absence after all, and its where she is most likely to spot the court’s new favorite playthings.

Sure enough, Bucky is resplendent in glistening black leather armor, the tooled decoration a mass of vines and branches to match his arm of interwoven tree branches dotted with leaves. His expression is vacant, his flesh hand on the pommel of his sword as he stands at attention to the left of the Queen. Steve is off to the side, gaze fixed firmly on Bucky despite the hungry glances of the grotesque fae around him. Darcy shakes out her wings and steps up to the dais in front of the throne, falling to one knee and bowing her head in deference to the Queen. Because the fae abandoned Darcy when they swapped her for a human child, she belonged to no court and so was under no obligation to swear fealty, but a little deference would go a long way to keeping her head on her shoulders.

She obtained permission to stay at court for a few weeks for the upcoming Samhain celebrations. She gossiped with various members of the court, plying them with honeysuckle mead and blackberry wine. She played the games that were needed to get the information she sought, careful not to display undue interest in either of the Queen’s new toys. At least not at first.

It took longer than she would have liked, but she finally managed to set herself up to insult the Queen—badly enough to draw consequences, but not so severe as to result in her immediate death. She needed the Queen to challenge her to a game that she could win: living chess. 

She knew that the Queen wouldn’t be able to resist casting Steve as a white piece and Bucky as black. That the Queen would, as tradition dictated, play black to Darcy’s white. That the Queen had no reason to believe that Steve was nearly as loyal to Darcy as he was to Bucky, that his training and his drive would hand Darcy the win on a silver platter. 

Darcy moved Steve around the board to draw first blood from every opponent piece clad in black glamour until he reached the Queen herself. 

Of course, Darcy might have been raised by humans but she was under no illusions that the Queen would let her toys go easily. 

So she stacked the deck. 

Steve might have been incapable of retrieving Bucky’s heart from the iron casket hidden in the tree roots deep beneath the main level of the barrow, but Darcy had friends and glamour and the advantage of belonging on her side. Not to mention that no one had any reason to suspect that the changeling would have any need for the Black Knight’s heart.

So when Steve went to confront the Winter Queen in the final move of the chess game, Bucky broke character and thrust his dagger directly between the faerie queen’s ribs, his tree arm coming up to wrap around her neck as she screeched out her fury and rage at the changeling who defeated her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an anon tumblr prompt for Darcy/Bucky/Steve/Sam/Nat as roommates

They’re all undergrads in college and there was a hiccup in the housing office so they ended up with a mixed gender suite. But it’s in the nicest dorm building on campus and it’s crazy competitive to get in there so none of them want to give up their spot and they all end up staying together.

Bucky is an architecture major with a minor in biology (because he’s a science nerd and he likes the classes). Steve is a fine arts major with a dual concentration in painting and printmaking. Natasha is a dance and psychology double major. Sam’s in the psych department too and they’re class-friends before they live together. Darcy was a political science major at her old school, but she isn’t sure if it’ll hold steady now that she’s transferred. Problem is, Darcy likes a lot of things, and she isn’t very good at choosing.

Steve and Bucky have known each other since they were kids and have reached the stage of familiarity where they can carry on entire conversations exclusively through body language. Natasha and Sam know each other from their psych classes and are friendly, if not strictly friends.

 

Darcy knows none of them because she is a transfer student.

She knows no one.

  
When you don’t have friends, Darcy learns, you have a lot of spare time. When you have a lot of spare time, you spend an obscene amount of money on baking supplies and start tackling increasingly complicated recipes that you have bookmarked on your computer.

She starts out simple, with various cookies that she leaves in a tupperware container on the kitchen table for her roommates to consume at will. They never last more than a couple of days.

Today, she decides to make pizza dough from scratch because she wants to punch something because her contemporary American politics professor is a raging conservative misogynistic racist homophobic asshole, amongst other unflattering descriptors that she mutters to herself as she throws flour onto the counter. (She is going to regret being quite so enthusiastic with the flour later when she has to clean it up, but right now she’s enjoying the puffs of white springing into the air and settling on her clothes and face and hair.) She plops the ball of dough into the middle of her flour-covered workspace and begins to knead with undue force, punching and pushing and folding and muttering angrily to herself.

She is so wrapped up in her righteous indignation that she fails to hear the apartment door open and close as Natasha and Sam come back from their classes for the day. At this point she has devolved to muttering curse words in every language she can think of, with no regards to grammar or logic, and her glasses are speckled with flour and wisps of hair have come loose from her bun to stick to her damp forehead and the back of her neck. Her hands and arms have reached a pleasant state of soreness, so after a final invective (in Italian, because pizza), she drops the ball of dough back down one last time with a heavy sigh and stares down at it.

“Darcy? You okay?”

She blinks up at Sam, who looks concerned, and Natasha, who definitely looks amused, and nods. “Yeah, my professor is just a super bigoted ass but I can’t say anything if I want to pass the class and it made me angry.” She looks down at the horribly overworked dough. “But I feel better now.”

Sam peers into the kitchen, trying to figure out what she’s making. “What you got there? You making bread?”

“Pizza dough.”

Sam waggles his eyebrows and amps up the charm as he asks, “Is that pizza going to be for sharing?”

Natasha smacks him in the stomach and rolls her eyes, but Darcy laughs. “Anyone who is here when it comes out of the oven is welcome to some.”

***

Darcy and Nat share a bedroom, and there is a brief adjustment period as they get used to each other, but in no time at all they are cohabitation experts and have grown comfortable enough to be seen by one another in their underwear without darting for cover.

Nat is something of an insomniac and keeps to an irregular sleeping pattern, but always moves her work out into the common area when Darcy gets ready for bed. On one such evening, Darcy hears Natasha slip back in around 1 am, a susurrus of cloth as she changes into pajamas and slides between her sheets. A few hours later, Darcy startles awake in the darkness. Her face is smushed into her pillow, so she strains to hear what caused her to wake up. No footsteps, no sirens, no doors opening or closing. But something is not right with Natasha’s breathing. Darcy flails out from under her blankets and turns on one of the desk lamps. Natasha is clearly still asleep, but she’s stiff as a board under the blankets and her breathing is strained. Nightmare, not anaphylactic shock. Darcy resists the impulse to shake her awake, because Nat is trained in martial arts and who knows how she might react to touch. So Darcy kneels in between their beds and starts to talk to her quietly.

“Nat. Nat, it’s Darcy. You’re having a bad dream. You’re safe at home and everything is fine, I just need you to wake up for me. Wake up for me, Nat, it’s just a bad dream. None of it is real. You’re okay, you’re safe, and I’m right here. Wake up, Natasha.”

Some of the tension fades from the redhead’s body and her breathing eases slightly, so Darcy continues a little louder, keeping her tone calm and soothing, until finally Nat’s body goes stiff and she inhales sharply and her eyes open.

“Nat, it’s me. You’re okay. You had a nightmare.” Darcy edges forward enough to get a look at Nat’s face. “Are you one of those people who likes to be left alone after a nightmare or do you want to cuddle? ‘Cuz I am proficient at both coping methods.”

Nat closes her eyes and exhales slowly before shuffling over to press herself against the wall, leaving enough space for Darcy to lie down next to her.

“Obviously I would have respected whatever choice you made, but let me just say that I am very relieved that you opted for door number two, because I am a definite cuddler.” Darcy slides in next to her roommate, wrapping the blankets around behind her to trap the warmth, and wiggles down until she’s comfortable. “I have no sense of personal boundaries, so please fell free to treat me like you would a favorite stuffed animal.” Darcy can’t be sure, but she thinks she spots a small, brief smile flash in response before Natasha hesitantly taps at Darcy’s hip until she is laying on her back. Emboldened by Darcy’s easy acquiescence, Natasha moves closer and wraps an arm around Darcy’s stomach.

Darcy has very nearly drifted off to sleep when she hears the whispered thank you come from the other side of the bed.

  
***

It took nearly two months of cohabitation for Darcy to realize that Steve Rogers was not just an adorable, skinny, little hipster, but a seriously sickly little hipster with a terrible immune system. Not too long before Halloween, just as cool breezes had started to blow through campus, Steve came down with the flu—fever, shaking, sore muscles, lethargy, stuffy nose, coughing up a lung every fifteen minutes—flu. Bucky went into full on mother hen mode, making a late night run to CVS for medicine and cough drops and berating Steve for even thinking about going to class when he was sick and wrapping him up in blankets until only his head and one arm were visible. Nat gave Steve her microwavable heating pillow to ease the soreness in his muscles along with a stack of foreign films for him to watch while he was bed-ridden. Sam amused him with corny jokes, both in person and via text throughout the day. Darcy gave him her HBO GO password and made a massive pot of chicken soup.

She ladled a serving into her largest mug and dropped a spoon in before heading into the boys’ bedroom where Steve was wrapped up in a fleece burrito watching one of Nat’s French films. “Hey, I made you some soup.”

Steve straightened slightly and wiggled his arms out of his cocoon. “You didn’t have to do that—Bucky got some canned soup when he went to the store.”

Darcy shrugged and tried to play it off. “It’s no big deal. I was craving soup and there’s really no way to make a small batch.”

Steve raised a disbelieving eyebrow as he accepted the warm mug. “I have never seen you make soup before.”

“Well, it’s really a cold weather food, so obviously I had to wait until it was seasonally appropriate.”

Steve smiled. “I don’t believe you at all, but thank you. It smells wonderful.”

  
***

If there was one thing that Natasha was honestly terrible at, it was cooking.

But even knowing her propensity to burn things, Sam and Bucky were still shocked and horrified the day they saw her dump a container of sliced mushrooms directly into her omelette.

“Nat, did you rinse those first?”

She shrugged. “They get rinsed before they slice them, yes?”

Sam shouted out a horrified, “No!” and Bucky banged his head against the wall.

“You are hereby banned from making anything for Steve to eat. Liable to kill him with some kind of food borne illness. E. coli. Salmonella.”

Natasha shrugged as she folded her omelette in half. “It hasn’t killed me.”

Sam groaned loudly. “Not yet, but there is a first time for everything.”

***

Steve sketched them all constantly. Sometimes in his sketchbook, sometimes on loose scraps of paper–including the Chinese take-away menu. He left charcoal smudged fingerprints all over the place until Natasha yelled at him for being a real life Pig-Pen, which had led to a very early screening of A Charlie Brown Christmas since he hadn’t caught the reference. Bucky and Sam refused to let the nickname go, even after Steve got very good at cleaning his hands before touching anything in the room.

***

Sam was the only one who went home for Thanksgiving, to a massive family gathering in Atlanta.

Both Darcy and Natasha had aged out of foster care, although one of Nat’s foster siblings was coming to visit. Bucky and Steve couldn’t afford to go home for both Christmas and Thanksgiving. So they decided to try and host their own Thanksgiving in the apartment. Their kitchen was tiny, and they didn’t have many pots, which required considerable creativity from Bucky and Darcy (the only ones trusted in the kitchen) to get enough food made for everyone and cook a fresh turkey.

Natasha was allowed to chop vegetables and Steve was allowed to decorate the carrot cake.

Darcy made the stuffing and green bean casserole, and Bucky was in charge of the turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes.

The arguments over the proper way to make gravy and mashed potatoes, and disagreements over what ingredients were or were not allowed in traditional stuffing were hissed back and forth as Darcy and Bucky shared the insignificant workspace of the galley kitchen.

A bottle of wine eased any lingering sense of hostility between Darcy and Bucky over their perfectionist approaches to cooking holiday meals. Although Clint was an undoubtedly welcome addition, the rest of them missed Sam’s sense of humor and bright smile, so they set up Skype on Darcy’s laptop and set it on the table so that Sam could virtually join them for dessert and a Thanksgiving toast.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy/Steve: Person A owns a flower shop and person B comes storming in one day, slaps 20 bucks on the counter and says “How do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?”

Okay, but imagine this in the context of a traditional soulmate AU, and Darcy is the one barging into Steve’s little flower shop in Brooklyn. 

And Steve grew up with “Hello, how do I passive-aggressively say ‘fuck you’ in flowers?” inked down the line of his spine, which his mother found alternately delightful (such spunk) and also somewhat terrifying (such language! and also _why_?) but Steve has had years to prepare for this moment, he has rehearsed the answer to that question so many times that when he finally hears it, he answers completely on autopilot, only realizing what happened after the words have already left his mouth. (Nettles, by the way, convey defiance; begonias signify war; geraniums, stupidity; hydrangeas, frigidity and heartlessness; and orange lilies convey straight up hatred.)

So Steve has just rattled off this list of flowers, no hesitation at all, where Darcy was convinced that this was gonna be like pulling teeth to get the cherubic florist to _give her what she needed right now._ And the fact that he knows this, instantly, has it fucking _memorized_ , is just the strangest turn on and _what is the matter with her?_ And then she realizes that the list is very familiar, because she has “nettles, begonias, geraniums, hydrangeas, and orange lilies” in a spiral on her shoulder blade, which means that her soulmark is actually just a really well-disguised “fuck you” and has been this _whole damn time_ , where she thought it was either going to be totally mundane or super romantic.

(And damn it, Wade is never going to apologize for getting blood all over her new couch if he finds out that it inadvertently led to Darcy meeting her soulmate.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki turns Steve into a very small puppy in the midst of battle. Lucky for him, Darcy was in search of cronuts when the battle broke out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> inspired by [this](https://pepperpottsblogs.tumblr.com/post/147665567015/shieldshockfanfic-katherinedenningss-i-got) post on tumblr

The entire day had been a disaster.

And that was before Loki had shown up.

 

“While I appreciate your enthusiasm, Captain, I’m afraid I cannot afford to allow you to continue getting underfoot.” Loki clucked as Steve raised his shield defensively. “That’s not going to be of much help to you in a moment.”

And then Steve was surrounded by a sickly green light and he felt almost as though his veins were filled with soda, popping and fizzing and sloshing around.

When the light finally dissipated, Steve’s perspective was a lot closer to the ground, his shield was on the pavement next to him and a lot larger than he was used to, and Loki was looking way too pleased with himself.

“Well aren’t you just adorable?” Loki crowed.

Steve glanced down to see…paws. He had paws. And fur. When he tried to speak, all that came out was a bark.

He was a dog. A very small, very fluffy dog.

“Well, now that you’ve been taken care of, I really should get back to work.”

And with that, Loki disappeared in another flash of light, leaving Steve in the alleyway next to his shield. What had happened to his uniform, he had no idea, but his comm was lying on the ground in front of him, useless.

 

Steve was alone in the alley for only a few moments, long enough to get the hang of walking with four legs and to establish that he could fit inside of his own shield, but couldn’t move it on his own.

He was startled when a brunette woman suddenly came skirting around the corner, skidding slightly.

“I just wanted to try a cronut!” she cried. “I just wanted to leave the tower and get a delicious baked good, but nooooo.” She shook a fist at the sky and shouted, “You will regret the day you came between me and my cronut, Loki! This I swear on the power of my taser and Thor’s thighs.”

Steve perked up as he recognized her voice. It was one of the lab assistants–the one that had come to the tower with Jane Foster. He knew her name had something do with Pride and Prejudice because she had made a joke about her and Jane being an odd pairing…Darcy! Her name was Darcy.

She turned around at the sound of his barking, already heading further into the alley with a concerned expression on her face. “Hey, puppy!” she cooed as she crouched down to look at him. “Are we friends or foes?” she asked as she held out her hand for him to sniff.

And Steve understood that if he was actually a dog that she was going about things the right way, but he wasn’t about to sniff a lady’s hand and give Loki the satisfaction. So he sat down in the middle of his shield, tail wagging in spite of himself, and gave a single small yip.

She shrugged. “I’ll just take that as a yes.” She reached out to scratch around his neck, which Steve had to admit felt really good, before sighing. “No collar. But you don’t look like a stray…” She put sure hands around his middle and hoisted him up, tucking him securely under one arm in a way that only reinforced how tiny Steve suddenly was.

She stopped short and stared down at his shield. “That does not look like the trashcan lid I was hoping for,” she muttered as she grabbed one of the arm straps on the inside of the shield and flipped it over, the iconic design leaving no question as to what it was.

She glanced between Steve and the shield a few times and then bent over to pick up his comm where it had fallen, blowing on it quickly to clean it off before sticking it in her ear.

“Yo, Avengers, I believe Steve may have been turned into a dog. A very cute dog, but also very small. Would someone like to pick up his shield from my location or should I just take all of Cap’s accoutrements back to the tower with me?… It’s Darcy, Tin Man, your lab assistant. And if you don’t cool it with the vague threats I will put laxatives in your coffee when you least expect it.”

After a pause, during which she must have received some kind of instructions from the team, Darcy crouched back down, setting Steve back on the pavement. She plopped her messenger bag down next to him, rearranging her notebooks and wallet to create a flat surface on the bottom before reaching over to pick him up again.

When Steve realized what she was planning to do, he started struggling in her hands. Why couldn’t he just walk? Why did he have to get carted around in a purse like some kind of helpless pomeranian?

Darcy set him back down and rolled her eyes. “Dude. I realize you find this unpleasant, but there are leash laws in New York and also flying alien crow things and I do not need to worry about one of them snatching up Cap on the way back to the tower. I have to carry you and your giant frisbee and the shield isn’t going to fit in my bag. So stop being difficult and get in.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> georgiagirlagain wanted a fic inspired by this post on tumblr: 
> 
> _my aesthetic is that one scene in holes where sigourney weaver paints her nails with rattlesnake venom infused nail polish and claws jon voight in the face_
> 
> ...and I couldn't resist.

Darcy had a lot of little quirks–-pushing her glasses up her nose by pressing her middle finger to one corner of the frames, wrapping her hair up into a coil when she was working, and painting her nails a bright crimson red every three days like clockwork. **  
**

Without fail, chips or no, she would clean off her nails and apply a fresh, impeccable coat of red polish, sitting on the common couch or lounging at her desk in Jane’s lab.

 

“You don’t use a top coat?” Natasha asked one evening in the common room as Darcy waved her hands back and forth to dry the varnish.

“Nope,” Darcy said with a shrug. “You don’t really need it when you use a good formula.”

 

****

 

Darcy was on her way back from a lunch run when he tried to grab her.

 

The guy just body-slammed her right into an alley off of 8th Avenue, knocking the paper bag full of delicious burrito goodness onto the ground and into a puddle.

Darcy pressed the panic button on the ring that Tony had made for her (his “just in case” suddenly seeming a lot less paranoid than it had at the time) and clawed viciously at the hand over her mouth. She screamed in frustration when she realized he was wearing leather gloves, bucking and thrashing her body to keep him distracted as she tugged his gloves down with one hand and dug her nails into the flesh of his wrist with the other.

 

And now, she thought with satisfaction, it was only a matter of time.

 

First, she felt his grip over her mouth falter. She felt him trying to fight through the burning pain spreading through his hand and arm, felt him lose the battle as the numbness set in. She broke free of his grip, spinning around to ram her knee in between his legs, shoving him forward and into the pavement when he doubled over.

 

She sat down on top of him, easily taking the knife from his right hand as it started to go lax.

“You should really stop struggling so much,” she advised. “It only makes it worse.”

The anonymous Hydra agent wheezed something that was probably supposed to be something along the lines of “What did you do to me?” although his consonants were too weak for it to really be intelligible.

“Synthetic rattlesnake venom in my nail polish.” Darcy waved her fingers at him. “Old family trick.”

 

She re-settled her weight across his torso and sighed. “Technically I have the antivenom in my purse, but it’s with my burritos at the mouth of the alley in a puddle, thanks to you. So we’re going to wait for my friends to get here and then they can decide what to do with you. You should really pray that Thor doesn’t show up; he takes it real personal when people try to hurt me.”

 

Right on cue, the whoosh of repulsors sounded from the mouth of the alley, followed by Natasha’s familiar, “Darcy!”

She glanced over her shoulder and waved to Natasha and Tony. “Hi, guys.”

“I’m confused,” Tony said. “I thought you were the one in trouble. Is he dead?”

Darcy glanced back down at the Hydra agent, head cocked to one side in consideration, and then shook her head. “Not yet.”

Natasha leaned over Darcy’s shoulder to take a look for herself. “Poison?”

“Rattlesnake venom.”

Natasha nodded appreciatively. “Nice choice.”

“Thank you,” Darcy preened.

“Are there snakes?” Tony complained. “I hate snakes.”

“No, Tony. It’s synthetic.” She turned to Natasha and offered, “I have the antivenom in my purse if you’d like him alive for interrogation purposes.”

Natasha nodded and straightened up. “I’ll get it. He might prove useful.”

 

Tony stomped around to face Darcy. “Do you just carry around a syringe full of snake venom all the time?”

“Of course not,” Darcy said. “That would be ridiculous.”

 _“Agreed,”_ Tony interrupted.

“I mix it into my nail polish so that it’s always handy.”

“I cannot believe you made a pun at a time like this,” Tony said. “You wear a deadly toxin all the time and you’re sitting on top of a Hydra agent and cracking puns. Who are you?”

“I’m really enjoying it,” Natasha offered as she crouched down and injected the antivenom. “We should compare notes. SHIELD’s R&D department hasn’t managed to perfect their nail polish poison formula yet.” She waved Darcy off of the unconscious Hydra agent and slapped cuffs onto his wrists, taking a moment to admire the swollen red scratches on his wrist. “Very nice.”

 

A mechanical sounding whine emerged from the speakers of Tony’s suit. “Oh my god, there are two of you.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark's niece

So I know we all love the Darcy Lewis is Tony Stark’s Daughter trope. I am not innocent of this.

BUT consider a twist.

 

Tony thinks that Darcy is his daughter for all the usual reasons, right? So he has her DNA tested (secretly, of course) to confirm his suspicions.

And when JARVIS comes back with the results, he starts out by confirming that Darcy _is_ related to Tony. He wasn’t imagining all those little things.

But Darcy isn’t his daughter. She’s his niece.

Because we know Howard was notorious for having flings. We know that Tony wasn’t born until Howard Stark was 53 years old. 

 

So imagine that one of Howard’s flings (a production assistant at Stark Pictures, maybe) gets pregnant in the early or mid sixties. [I will call her Caroline, for the sake of ease.] And Caroline wants nothing more to do with Howard Stark, and she doesn’t want to put her child in danger by publicizing her connection to Stark, so she never tells anyone. She sells her Stark Special Bracelet because she needs the money more than she needs a stupid diamond bracelet. 

A pregnant Caroline moves back east. She uses the money from Stark’s parting gift to buy a house. She names her daughter Elizabeth (and continues the tradition of Pride and Prejudice names). Caroline works as a secretary after her daughter is born. She endures the harassment of her male coworkers who believe her to be easy prey and the insults of the other secretaries who call her loose and immoral and a bad mother. Her sister, Jane–the good one, the one who married a respectable man before having children–watches Caroline’s daughter when she’s at work.

 

(Tony Stark is born to Howard and Maria Stark in 1970. Caroline’s daughter is already old enough to be in school.)

 

Elizabeth is brilliant. She takes apart the family’s television and rebuilds it before she’s ten years old. She graduates from high school at the age of 15. (Tony will graduate from high school at the age of 12, because he is a boy, and a Stark, and it is easier for teachers to accept his brilliance).

 

Caroline’s daughter studied physics at Caltech. She got her doctorate, she married a fellow Caltech graduate student. She started teaching physics at Boston College.

 

In 1993, a little over a year after Howard and Maria Stark died in a car accident, Elizabeth gave birth to Darcy Maria Lewis.

Darcy is precocious, with all the fierce intelligence of her mother (and uncle) but without the chip on her shoulder. Her father is present and involved, and when she dismantles the family television at age 8, he is there to talk her through putting it back together. Both of her parents are at her high school graduation, because Darcy, at 14, is the valedictorian. Darcy’s first undergraduate degree is in computer engineering. She lives at home and commutes to MIT. Tony Stark gives her commencement address.

 

At 17, fresh off her stint at MIT, Darcy decides to try out a liberal arts school, so she goes to Culver. She decides to major in political science because it’s so different from everything she did at MIT and she liked her professor for the 101 class. When she starts to miss tinkering and math her junior year, she signs up for an internship with Jane Foster, astrophysicist. 

 

In 2012, at only 19, Darcy Lewis is present for the for the first recorded alien contact with mankind. She has her first interaction with SHIELD, the agency that her grandfather cofounded.

 

In 2014, Tony Stark finds out that he still has a family. That he has a sister, and a brother-in-law, and a niece. 


End file.
